Sunday, March 25, 2012

Santorum Wins Louisiana Primary; Gingrich Fading

Rick Santorum won the Louisiana Primary by more than 20 points on Saturday. Mitt Romney came in second, and Newt Gingrich was way behind with only 16% of the vote. As Elephant Watcher predicted after Santorum won in Alabama and Mississippi, Gingrich's support has evaporated--even in the Deep South, his strongest region. Louisiana was the final contest to be held in the Deep South. Gingrich will post even lower numbers in the remaining Southern states, and will poll near zero outside of the South. Though he has not dropped out of the race officially, Gingrich has become a non-factor, because he's no longer taking many of Santorum's Anti-Romney votes away.

Unfortunately for Santorum, Gingrich was already a non-factor in the Midwest by the time Romney clobbered them both in Illinois. The only poll done so far in Wisconsin shows Romney well ahead of Santorum; Gingrich's numbers are already rock-bottom there. Previous contests in the West and Northeast indicate that Gingrich didn't have much support there to begin with, so Santorum has little to gain.

Santorum's win in Louisiana was expected, and will have no impact on the race as a whole. Fans of Santorum may be frustrated by the fact that when Romney does as well as expected, Romney gets closer to the nomination, but when Santorum does as well as expected, it doesn't help. Why the disparity, and why do expectations matter? The answer is that if everything goes as expected, Romney will win the nomination.

All of the projections of the race's likely trajectory--resulting in a Romney nomination--account for Santorum's wins in Louisiana and other Southern states. It's only if Santorum can pull off some truly unexpected upset wins in the Northeast and West that he can win the nomination or stop Romney from getting a majority of the delegates. Santorum's most realistic hope was that defeating Gingrich and uniting the Anti-Romney vote would be a game-changer. So far, it hasn't been. Starting with Michigan, every decisive race has gone in Romney's favor (Michigan, Ohio, Illinois).